Calif. budget passes with transportation and pollution caveats

Calif. budget passes with transportation and pollution caveats    Tuesday's end to a seven-week California state budget impasse — with the narrow passage of a $145 billion plan — came at a cost that could come back to haunt numerous state legislators that have jumped on the green bandwagon.
   The budget, stalled in the state Senate since July 1, required last-minute deals to get two Republican votes needed to give the Democrats a necessary two-thirds majority. The budget passed with exactly a two-third majority, 27-12. The state Assembly passed the budget last month.
   The deal struck early Tuesday with the defecting Republicans imposes a moratorium on global warming-related lawsuits. The measure, if signed by the governor with the budget, removes emissions accounting on transportation and flood-control projects funded by the nearly $20 billion in Proposition 1b bond money approved by voters in November.
   Under the deal, projects built with the funds do not have to track greenhouse gas emissions under the California Environmental Quality Act until January of 2010. This effectively places all such projects outside the control of the state's emission control authorities for more than two years. The moratorium was sought by Republicans to head off perceived legal threats from the state Attorney General's office toward cities and counties that fail to balance greenhouse reductions against local growth.
   The end of the budget impasse also allows the Lowenthal cargo container tax bill, AB974, to resume moving toward a full Assembly vote. The bill, which would impose a $30-per-TEU tax on every container moving through the ports of Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Oakland, must pass in the full Legislature before a Sept. 15 legislative deadline. If the bill fails to move out of committee and win approval on the floor before the deadline, the bill will have to be reintroduced by author Sen. Alan Lowenthal, D-Long Beach, during the next session of the Legislature.